Upon arrival, we were given more JP Morgan merchandise than I could count; despite my previous apprehensions about the event, I was certainly interested now. After being assigned into teams, we started exploring four of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The main task of this event was to use our creativity, tech and problem-solving skills to create innovative ideas to tackle a particular goal.

My team chose to do this through designing an app that would combat climate change, which tracks and monitors carbon dioxide emissions in households and gives tips to improve people’s carbon footprint. We were given an absolute banquet of food to keep our brains fueled. In the afternoon, we had to present our idea to a panel of judges, and we ended up winning the overall competition, and received an iPad mini each for our effort.

Top tips

Have a positive attitude and ability to think outside the box

Ensure you can work well as a team, and allocate roles that will allow each team member to play to their strengths.

Always include as many of your teammates’ ideas as possible. The top 3 ideas last year all had many different aspects to the app.

Don’t forget to prepare the presentation. The judges need to understand your ideas and see how they could actually help the global goal.

Each team is given a mentor for the day so make sure you ask many questions! You can find out about what it’s like to work in Tech, the sort of questions the judges could ask you, and anything else!

​This was a really wonderful event as it gave me a view into fintech that I hadn’t really engaged with before. I would recommend this to everyone, especially those interested in technology and development. JP Morgan’s Generation Tech event was a fun, inspiring way to spend a Saturday.